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Intellectual Property

The unit who takes care of this information is the Access and Document Supply Service. Email: info@bnc.cat

What are intellectual property rights?

What are limits or exemptions to intellectual property?

What is the public domain and what is the copyright term?

What is an orphan work?

What are the Creative Commons licenses?

What is the right of citation and how is it applied?

What does "cite the source of a work" mean?

What are licenses?

What should it be done to digitize and making available a document at the Internet?

How can be right holders searched?

Is it expensive to use a work?

Can be works used without asking for permission?

How can an author protect his work?

What does symbol © mean?

Where can I find out more information and being up to date?

What are intellectual property rights?

Intellectual property is a set of rights that the law affords to authors to protect their literary, artistic or scientific works. They divide in moral and economic rights. Law also considers the related rights, including other right holders such as performers, phonograms’ producers, etc. Right holders can be natural or legal persons.

What are limits or exemptions to intellectual property?

Limitations and exemptions are uses allowed by law to guarantee some cultural, social and educational functions.

They have been set at articles 31-40 of the Spanish Law. It should be highlighted the article 37, about reproductions and other public communication acts, that libraries, museums, archives and institutions of public ownership are doing for research and preservation.

What is the public domain and what is the copyright term?

A work is in the public domain when holder's rights have expired. In Spain, rights are in force during author’s lifetime plus 80 years after his death or death declaration for authors who died before 7 December 1987, and they are in force 70 years for authors who died after the mentioned date.

Related rights have specific terms and there are some particular situations that should be considered to identify which rights are covering a work, which are the following:

Author’s work	Author’s lifetime and 80 or 70 years plus for heirs, (art. 26)
Coauthors	Author’s lifetime and 80 or 70 years plus for heirs, from the date of last coauthor’s death (art. 28)
Collective work	80 or 70 years from the date of publication or distribution of the work. If it is published in parts, it should be each part calculate individually (art. 28)
Posthumous work/anonymous/pseudonyms	80 o 70 years from the date of publication. If pseudonym is revealed, it will have the same rights as author’s work (art.27).
Related rights: They include artists and performers (art. 112); phonogram producers (art. 119); audiovisuals producers (art. 125); broadcasting organizations (art. 127)	50 years from the date of publication or distribution.
Mere photograph	25 years from the date of publication or distribution (art. 128)
Unpublished works in the public domain and unprotected works	25 years (art. 130)

The coming into the public domain is considered from 1 January of following year.

Creative Commons promotes the assignment of the Public Domain Mark, http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/22940. This initiative has been supported by Europeana https://creativecommons.org/2010/10/11/creative-commons-launches-public-domain-mark-europeana-and-cultural-heritage-institutions-lead-early-adoption-2/. Eropeana provides a tool to calculate if a work is or not in the public domain. http://outofcopyright.eu/

What is an orphan work?

Orphan works are copyrighted works for which the location of right holders is impossible. They cannot be used. European Commission has presented a Directive 2012/28/EU about orphan works. Its aim is to facilitate their use after applying a sure protocol to help heritage dissemination as well as to respect holders’ rights. When this Directive will be approved it must be introduced into Spanish law through a law.

What are the Creative Commons licenses?

The Creative Commons licenses http://creativecommons.org were created in 2001. One of the lawyers of CC - one of their more prominent promoter - is Lawrence Lessig. The purpose of these licenses is protecting author’s works and making easier its diffusion for non-commercial uses. These licenses allow reproduction, distribution and public communication of any work, and require a unique condition: to cite the author. Some additional conditions may be added: non-commercial purposes, without derivative works, share alike … The author himself is who select them.

Nowadays the use of CC licenses is growing, especially in web context, because they inform of uses and activities allowed without previous permission. Many governments and academic sectors have opted for this model. There are other open licenses, but CC is most extended. CC is based on intellectual property.

What is the right of citation and how is it applied?

The citation allows to introduce pieces from other works into the own one, even if they are entire works, in the case of plastic or photographic works isolated, whenever they are works already distributed, for citation, comment or criticism judgment. The author and source should be cited. There are many citation systems at bibliographic level, and also tools that may help to research methodology.

What does "cite the source of a work" mean?

Institutions that own documents and works usually ask for being cited as owners of a work. Their name should be mentioned as the institution indicates.

What are licenses?

At the electronic context, licenses are contracts between provider and user where are specified access conditions to document. They usually include: contract object, parts, use clauses, use restrictions, price, term and contract completion, as well as legislation in force.

These conditions should be respected once the license is accepted, as well as instructions about uses and permissions.

What should it be done to digitize and making available a document at the Internet?

It implies the reproduction and public communication when the surrogate is made available at the Internet. A previous permission from rights holders is necessary for the second action described.

The steps to follow before deciding whether or not a work can be digitized and put available on the network are:

Identify the nature of work (public documentation or subject to intellectual property rights)
Identify the different rights holders: to analyze the work and its different possible authors (author, translator, illustrator...)
Identify if these right holders are in the public domain or may have rights
Locate rights holders and ask them for permission
Keep all the documentation produced

How can be right holders searched?

The research of right holders is a very complex task if they are not current authors.

First, they should be checked data as authors’ name, place and date of birth and death. Encyclopedias and references sources may be useful. Then, once this information is sure, it is needed to contact authors. It is usual to contact publishers, management rights societies, Intellectual Property Registry, professional associations and institutions that have been in contact with authors (for ex. A library which has received the authors’ collections).

CEDRO provides a payment service of research of rights holders.

When it comes to recent rights holders (last 25 years) it is easier to find a contact and so, the permission. Keep the permission and all the documentation produced.

When it comes to older authors, it is sometimes impossible to get permission. This is the case of the orphan works, above mentioned.

While is not a legal solution, the use of orphan works without permission implies a risk.

Is it expensive to use a work?

The Ministry of Culture gives access to several links to the fees of collective rights management societies. Prices for use are showed at each file. If an author do not belongs or cannot be found at these societies, it should be needed to contact the author’s agent, editorial firm or the author himself, to get a budget.

Can copyright works be used without asking for permission?

Only the works in public domain and those under a CC license. Both author and source should be always cited.

How can an author to protect his work?

He can make registration at the Intellectual Property Registry or using a private registry such as Safecreative, he can also make a notarial deposit, or do nothing. The law protects him anyway, but if is not being used any tool of protection, it would be more complex to get evidences in case of lawsuit.

If work has been published, the legal deposit number and the ISBN number are two more evidences.

Intellectual Property Registry of Catalonia

Virtual Registries:

http://www.safecreative.org/

http://www.registeredcommons.org/

The symbol © identifies right holders. It is a symbol used worldwide. This symbol can be used without any previous procedure. When it is being used a CC license, should be chosen one of the possible licensing options.